In many areas of communications, processing, and control, the use of fiber optics is supplementing or supplanting the use of electronics. One example of this is in telecommunications, where the use of lightwave-conducting optical fibers is replacing the use of electrical-signal-carrying metallic conductors. The advantages derived from use of fiber optics include lower bulk and lower cost of transmission media, much higher speeds of communication, lesser attenuation per unit of distance with consequent need for fewer repeaters, and the capability of carrying many more communications via a single conductor.
As in electronics technology, it is necessary in lightwave technology to provide mechanisms for connecting conductors to each other and for connecting conductors to various devices that transmit, receive, or process signals. Unlike the field of electronics, however, where the connection of wires and printed board conductors to each other and to devices has been a relatively simple matter, interconnection of optical fibers and connection thereof to devices has been relatively difficult to achieve, and has required the use of complex, cumbersome, and bulky connectors to obtain satisfactory physical and optical characteristics of interconnection. In particular, the alignment of adjacent ends of connected optical fibers in a manner that was precise and could withstand the mechanical stresses and other rigors of ordinary use has proven to be difficult, complex, bulky, and expensive to achieve.
Inter alia, the complexity of satisfactorily-functioning optical connectors has limited their miniaturization. Thus, while the electronic art has commonly utilized connectors, and device packages and sockets therefor, containing tens or hundreds of closely-spaced miniaturized (on the orders of hundreds of an inch) pins and pin receptacles to establish electrical interconnection, analogous miniaturized interconnection capability has so far been impossible or impractical to achieve in the optical art.
Furthermore, many devices in the optical art are electro optical in nature, either requiring electricity as the source of their power or converting light signals into electrical signals and vice versa. Such devices therefore require that both optical and electrical connection be made thereto. The prior art has taken the approach of providing the two types of connections independently, via separate connectors. While such independent connectors have sometime been aggregated into a single connector assembly to provide for the simultaneous making or breaking of both the electrical and optical connections, the connections have nevertheless been established by separate connectors within the assembly, resulting in the use of relatively numerous connectors and hence relatively bulky and expensive connector assemblies.